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Meanwhile if you wanna play a game on linux you have to research on forums with neckbeards that act all high horsey and get mad at you for asking questions they deem simple. If they do answer its cryptic like: "oh you just use simplinuxuser-bash-sh bro". Then by the time you get the game to run you better hope its not on a laptop with integrated graphics and a nvidia card because by god making the game only see the nvidia card over the integrated graphics if the game doesnt have the option to swap which card youre using good luck to any new user.
Windows users just go to steams website, install steam, install game, play. Windows 10+ will install basic nvidia drivers without you doing anything at first bootup with internet connection. Look, I use linux, windows, macos in my house..windows is still my primary driver even with my steam deck being a close second these days. Im all for linux getting more use but its not easy stop acting like it is..its a hobby, its fun, thats it.
It is absolutely that easy to use Steam for most games on GNU/Linux now.
In fact, even easier, because you can use the software center to get Steam, skipping the whole going to their website part.
Not quite, running 75% of games requires turning on Proton, and while it’s incredible they can run at all, many have minor issues and/or require setup to work well. Plus dealing with graphics card drivers that are extremely laggy by default unless you find and install the correct version of the proprietary ones.
That's exclusively an NVidia problem. Because their cards are locked down.
If you have an AMD or Intel card, or even use a distro that deals with the NVidia drivers, you'll have no issues.
While some games have minor issues, most aren't deal breaking and some even work better than Windows. Especially impressive because they're Windows executables running on a foreign OS through a compatibility layer.
Even if it’s an NVIDIA problem, it’s still just a “Linux” problem for a non-experienced user
You’re right, my laptop does have a Nvidia card, but I thought one of the main benefits of Linux was being able to run on any hardware, or that’s at least what people have been saying since Windows 11 had certain requirements. I bought my laptop because it was only $250 (in 2017) but still had a 1080p screen and a graphics card, and I was a broke college student who couldn’t afford to be picky. If I could, why not pay a little extra for Windows as well?
Proton’s amazing and it’s made gaming on Linux significantly more feasible, but I struggled on the same laptop getting it to work, and needed to copy in flags and use old versions. It often works without a hitch but it’s still another thing to go wrong. Thankfully there are a lot more native Linux games due to Unity though.
Edit: Mint did give me an easy option to switch to proprietary drivers, but they were the wrong version and crashed when I tried to game. I ended up having to find them and download them manually.
Some distros actually ship Steam pre-installed.
Installing games on steam and playing them sounds like what you do on Linux 99% of the time too
Nah, you spend more time configuring than actually playing.
You even have to configure and emulate Windows, so you can configure your game on there.
I had to emulate windows once and it was for pyinstaller, not even a game. I doubt you have any experience at all
I’m assuming they’re referring to Proton/Wine, which is pretty great that exists, but the fact you need it in the first place, plus random incompatibilities and needing to add flags for some games, makes it less than ideal compared to Windows where everything just works™.
On windows there is a lot of (mostly old) software that don't work for random drivers/incompatibility. Proton/Wine is something that often you don't even have to touch in order to use as its integrated into steam, so I don't see why it should be a downside. Rather, I almost prefer wine prefixes over classic windows as I can decide a program which software should use without fearing weird versions mismatches or other errors steaming from global non-managed installations
Windows users just go to steams website, install steam, install game, play. Windows 10+ will install basic nvidia drivers without you doing anything at first bootup with internet connection
Linux users just go to steams website, install steam for their system (or use flathub), install game, play. Linux will install basic nvidia drivers (Nouveau) without you doing anything at first bootup.
Linux gaming is super simple. The only suckage comes from intrusive AntiCheat/AntiTemper software some developers deem absolutely necessary.
I don't think you are playing any game on Nouveau driver at this moment. Fortunately, most nvidia driver is a one click install on popular distro. Except if you are on fedora workstation and secureboot, then you will need to register the secureboot key.
true, I never use nVidia ever.
I had quite the opposite experience. Middle of last year, reinstalled Mint on an HP Elitebook 8570w (everybody online seemed to recommend it over upgrading in-place like a normal operating system), and wanted to play games. Steam installed fine, but Mudrunner had to be configured to use Proton. Fair enough, but it crashed on startup. Okay, I’ll try an older version. Still crashes no matter what version I try (and I was on shitty vacation WiFi so downloading was extra slow mind you). Okay, I’ll try some random USE_WINE3D flag I found on the internet. No longer crashes, but the performance is piss slow. “Oh right”, I remembered, “I have to select the proprietary Nvidia drivers”. Fortunately Mint has a setting to easily select them, unfortunately after installing them the game crashes no matter what I do. Give up and go back to open source with 5fps. Try again later, and realize that apparently Mint installed the wrong Nvidia drivers, and I have to manually download them and install via the command line. Some more tweaking Proton versions and flags, and the game is finally running at a solid 20fps.
Compare that to my brother I was playing with. Identical 8570w laptop, identical Quadro K1000m CPU, identical Mudrunner game. The game worked out of the box and ran faster on his computer than it ever did on mine. I don’t remember the exact FPS but it was at least 30, probably closer to 45.
And before someone comments on “Nvidia”, I thought one of the benefits of Linux was supposed to be the ability to run on anything. Even the cheap laptop I got in 2017 because it was $250 but came with a 1080p screen and a graphics card. Paying more for the “correct” hardware would defeat the entire point of saving money with an open source operating system.
hum, going to the website seems unintuitive, I was wondering why I cannot find steam in the app store. Turns out Windows is just not user-friendly.
User behaviors are formed by experience, most people starts with windows, and of course know to use device manager etc to troubleshoot and think it is intuitive.
When moving to a new OS there will of course be rough times. I was also utterly confused when I moved from Linux to Windows many years ago, but it took me couple months to a year to get used to it.
Now I have moved back to linux with many years on Windows experience, and I also struggle to port all my setup from Windows back to linux.
Just because things happen one way on one OS, doesn't mean other ways are "not user friendly".
Sorry, but you haven't used Linux seriously, then. Things were pretty hard 20 years ago when I switched to Linux desktops only, but today it's really is simpler to install Linux than windows./, talking from own experience. Installing Ubuntu is the usual 15-20 minutes breeze while windows 11 was a very painful 7 hour multi day process. It starts at downloading, the iso is like 4 times bigger. A typical windows issue l, as everything on windows is bloated to death.
Then writing the ISO onto a USB requires a very specific writer because apparently only that one worked for windows 11 (which is a typical Microsoft bullshit problem, let's not use standards, let's ensure it's only workable with tools they want you to use). Figuring that out required going into forums and whatnot
Then the install process crashed in step 2 with a typical error 000000000010000 or something like that, it's been a while, so I don't remember the exact code, but more searches and forums revealed that tadaaah, windows 11 requires some specific bios setting for my hardware (standard MSI AMD board) or it wouldn't work. Obviously no clear error message, just some vague code. Linux worked fine btw, it was already installed before on a separate m.2
Then there was an issue with the license key that I don't recall anymore, it's been a few months ago and I've literally been trying to forget the experience. Coat a few extra hours, still.
Then, hours later already, I cn actually start the install. Effin yay. There are what feels like hundreds of screens and crap to click through, loads about windows wanting to steal my soul with ads and monitoring and please sir, but some more crap you don't want!
I installed Linux on a Saturday, started onwindows 30 minutes later, and finished windows about a week (and about 7 hours total work time) later.
Windows SUCKS because it's been designed to work well for Microsoft, Linux may have issues but it's been actually getting better every time over the past 25 years.
On servers? Don't get me started, windows is a sad sad joke, I don't even take it seriously. Watching windows administrators do their "work" is just one big "whyyyy??"
Should I mention your android phone is Linux too?
Saying Linux is only for a hobby is beyond short sighted. Sorry bout the rant but it irks me when people casually mention it's a hobby because they don't really know it, then happily leap back into the daily grinder that is windows